40 Days to Revolution 4

We are over the top and on the downhill side of 40 days.  This week we have been asked to consider where we need to apply more self-discipline (… this at a time of life for me when I get to loosen up the discipline, live a little).  And we have been asked to consider what we need to let go, excess baggage we need leave behind.  And we have been asked to add a few minutes of meditation to the beginning and end of each day.  It seems push has come to shove and I am going to come up short this week.

Mar 31, this was our morning greeting:

One crystal flake falls far apart from another.

This spring weather has weather beaten me.

or

One crystal flake falls, far apart from another:

winter’s last eyelash kiss before spring.

40 Days to Revolution 3

This week we have been asked to reflect on Grace… and to consider how to maintain balance and equanimity in our busy lives.  I reckon it gets easier with age.  I am not sure why that is.  Less busy? No, not really.  Realization of what is actually important?  Yes, likely. 

Meanwhile, the best part of my busy week was finding time to share with my yoga revolution buddy who is a sweetie and awfully talented.  We were present with each other.  We were alive and refreshed from Mary’s Iyengar yoga.  We were blessed with Grace in our shared time together.

Final stolen thoughts:

“Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.”

William Hazlitt

 

40 Days to Revolution Circle of Life

 .Spirit.Joy.Relationships.Family.Home.Health.Athletics.Eating/Cooking.Education.

.Career.Finances.Creativity

40 Days to Revolution 3/20/11

Courageous moments

Have you ever stood on a cliff

on the edge of the world wondering, what if?

One step and you fall into the abyss

or you fly into a future of bliss.

I have.

I have stood on a cliff holding my best friend’s hand

when we said, “I do” and, “yes we can.”

Have you ever faced a thicket--

a wall of bushes so high stretching left and right?

The intertwined branches and leaves

making a dense tangled fence.

I have.

I have faced the thicket of unknowns holding in one hand my child’s hand

and in the other a machete to wield against the wilderness.

Have you ever been in a celestial black hole

with dark shadows closing in on your soul?

Where the tiny light is brilliant and tender

where the time is short and honored.

I have.

I have hung upon that precipice of darkness

and laid to rest half my heart.

Have you ever been blinded with half a mind?

Felt permanently puzzled and paralyzed?

Wondering how am I to improvise?

What should I do? What’s the point?

I have.

Daily, I have stood in that lonely spot and felt lost

and unprepared, and yet have persevered.

These are my courageous moments.

40 Days to Revolution 3/10/11

What is it to be living in the present?  Why do we want it?  Actually, why are we asking this question and why is it bugging me?

First, for there to be “living in the present”, there must be living in the past and living in the future.

Living in the past is reliving memories.  That can be good and bad, happy and sad.  We can learn from the past—that is good.  We can do that in the present:  analyzing a past event or action. We can’t change the past.  But we can’t stay there.  Living only in the past.  It’s only a third of life.

Living in the future is dreaming and hoping and planning.  It might be worrying.  It might be wishing.  We can do that in the present.  But we can’t live there either.  It’s only a third of life.

The third third… Living in the present.  I think the problem is that we live in the past and future half and half without enough present. We bring or allow the past and the future to dominate our thoughts in the present.  Therefore, the goal perhaps, is be aware of what is around us, when the world intrudes, but to maintain a mental distance. 

And yet there is something to be said for refection and daydreaming.  There is something to be said for “zoning out” when you are completely involved—so much so that you are lost in the present.

The Cecily Saunders

The Cecily Saunders

came to stay with us—

long before we needed her.

I think she was sort of tall,

or she seemed that way

and was actually small.

Whatever--she was big

and so important

and she was here in our house.

She dressed as you might expect:

a smiling nanny

with listening blue eyes.

This quiet little meeting

of Britain and us

set a tidal wave in motion.

Miss Saunders brought the doctors

the permission to see

a new Hippocratic Oath.

To care and yet not to care,

that was the question--

what is to become of us?

Cecily said, hold my hand;

cocktail hour is good;

and please take away the pain.

She stayed with us

at  281

like a regular person.

And then 30 years later

we came to her house:

Clifton Springs, House of John

A place of honor, no pain;

a place for cocktails,

holding hands and letting go.

Thank you, Miss Saunders.

I have five friends

I have five friends

I have five friends that float along like kites in the sky:
chameleon kites:  sometimes a flat kite,
sometimes a delta—always a fighter kite
from day to day, and year to year, flourishing in flight.

Bright colors, tales swinging wildly,
buffeted by the winds of time and change--
often inter-tangling the strings of their lives
occasionally soaring apart.

All the trees want us--they are like children
reaching their twiggy fingers out
to hold on, to keep us from flying away.
It is tenacious work to sway above the fray.

Three of us have lost the hand that guides us
our lines tangled in the telephone wires
or driven by the wind into the trees.
We fly now unassisted, willy-nilly.

Three retain their handlers, making a team
of tethered flyers and sailors—
paired, partnered in the challenge
to fly banked against the blue skies.

From the earth below my kite is intact,
but from the clouds above, she is battered
From below one can’t see the holes in her silk,
but my kite is ready to cut the lines and drift.

                           * * *

A kite’s dream:

To drift among the clouds, breathing rarefied air,
caressed by the sun, floating with the stars;
if I am to be un-tethered, why must I still be constrained?
Let me be free.